March for Life announces new location, tentative speakers

By RHINA GUIDOS |
Catholic News Service

12/13/17

Pro-lifers walk past the Supreme Court during the 2017 March for Life in Washington. CATHOLIC HERALD FILE

WASHINGTON — March for Life organizers announced in a Dec. 6
briefing a tentative group of speakers, a theme and other details for a Jan. 18
conference and expo and Jan. 19 march and rally in Washington.

"Love saves Lives" is the theme of the 2018 march, said
Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, adding that the group also
wants to focus on the sacrifice involved with bringing life into the world but
also in the interactions with one another.

One of the speakers who will talk about that during the event is
Pam Tebow, mother of former football player Tim Tebow, said Mancini.

"Her story for choosing life for Timmy is beautiful,"
Mancini said. Tebow's doctors told her she had to have an abortion to save her
own life, but she refused and delivered a healthy boy.

Another person who will share her story is Kelly Rosati, a March
for Life board member, who has adopted four children previously in foster care.

Mancini said the organization also wants to provide a focus for
the work done by pregnancy centers and maternity homes that help women who find
themselves in an unplanned pregnancy.

"Those homes are totally about providing resources for women
facing unexpected pregnancies and they're often given a bad rap," she
said.

A day before the rally and march, the March for Life organization
will host a conference and an expo, as well as a session with instructions on
how to track legislators' votes and provide "tools to lobby."

The National Park Service has a refurbishing project that makes
it too expensive to be on the grounds of the Washington Monument, so the noon
march, the main event Jan. 19, will begin instead on the National Mall between
Madison Drive and Jefferson Drive. It then will proceed down Constitution
Avenue. The march will head toward the U.S. Capitol and then pas the Supreme
Court of the United States.

Congressmen Dan Lipinksi, an Illinois Democrat, and Chris
Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, have confirmed their attendance, Mancini
said.

"The March for Life is nonpartisan, or bipartisan, we're always
onsectarian. We always try to get people from both sides of the political aisle
to speak at the March for Life," she said, adding that it's not always an
easy task.